Josephine Winslow JohnsonRezensionen

There is a lot of dust. A huge amount of dust. And more dust.

This relatively short, exquisitely crafted novel set on a failing farm in the Great Depression won the Pulitzer Prize several years before Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath tackled the same subject in more epic fashion with the same result. Johnson's novel is both more intense and less melodramatic; it has no "sweep", but rather penetrates deep into the hearts and psyches of a farm family in an unspecified part of the drought stricken mid-West as they toil through year after unprofitable year, making no headway against their mortgage debt. Even as they watch their neighbors pack up and move on...somewhere...there is never a suggestion that the Haldmarne family will think about giving in. Next year...next year will surely be better. The prose is full of evocative poetic nuggets-- "The wild cherries were in bloom. It was hot still, and ink-blotter clouds messed up the sky but brought no rain. The spring green was like green sunlight or green fire--something, anyway, more lovely than just leaves..."--but not always pretty ones--"The wires lay down across the field with the charred posts left at intervals like burned crows caught between the barbs." As others have pointed out in several excellent on-site reviews of this novel, it is incredible to contemplate that it was written by a 24-year-old woman, and despite the enthusiasm of its contemporary reception, including that Pulitzer Prize, it has now become a work that needs to be sought after, unlike the GAN that seems to have completely overshadowed it. My recommendation: Find it. Read it. Weep.

A farming family struggles with poverty, mental illness, drought, and tragedy in a heartbreaking story told with extreme insight into the human spirit. What a beautifully-told story!

[b:Now in November|267115|Now in November|Josephine Winslow Johnson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390983337l/267115._SY75_.jpg|258987] is [a:Josephine Winslow Johnson|736298|Josephine Winslow Johnson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1371513942p2/736298.jpg]’s novel of a depression era farming family, caught up in the everyday hardness of the farm and the growing darkness of a world in financial crisis. The drought that overtakes Marget and her family, is more than a drought of the land, it is a drought of the soul.

The interpersonal relationships described by Marget are those of people caught in an eddy that drags them deeper and deeper into themselves and separates them further and further from one another. There is a genuine sense of desperation in each of the three daughters, Kerrin, Marget, and Merle, and there is a shadow of unavoidable failure that encompasses the father, who must try to keep a farm alive in the absence of sons.

although I was quick to hate him when he would turn on us suddenly and shout out, “eat your dinner, you girls, stop messing with your food!” But all the time I would feel us there on his shoulders, heavy as stone on his mind--all four of our lives to carry everywhere. And no money.

While the book is about the depression and the struggle to survive against nature and obligation, it is also about what it is to love, or at least to seek love, hopelessly.

Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How can I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?

It is about how to survive, or at least how to keep moving forward, against a headwind that never diminishes.

I was afraid though and prayed--Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind!

Finally, it is about loss, looking back, finding that the days you thought hard were the closest you would get to days of joy and lightness.

Once I thought there were words for all things except love and intolerable beauty. Now I know that there is a third thing beyond expression--the sense of loss. There are no words for death.

When you put this book into the perspective of being the debut work of a 24 year old writer and then consider that it won the Pulitzer Prize for 1935, you realize just how remarkable a work of fiction it truly is. I felt akin to these people and wrapped up in their travails and their fates, and a bit hopeless in the face of their sorrows.

Josephine W. Johnson gives an intimate and in depth look at nature and wildlife over the course of a year at her 37 acre farm in Ohio in The Island Island. Written where one chapter covers a month, we see the seasonal and phenological changes of a year in Ohio. Johnson's writing makes everything seem beautiful, even when it is bleak. She has a talent for making the everyday and mundane leap off the page. I enjoyed her descriptions of the birds, toads, flowers and the weather. Johnson focuses on more than just the big picture. I loved when she got excited at new animal sightings. More than just descriptive of the world around her, Johnson incorporates her feelings into her observations and at the time she wrote The Inland Island, her feelings of the Vietnam War are heavily on her mind and mixed into her observations of the natural world. Reading The Inland Island felt like taking a walk through my backyard with a friend, enjoyable, eye-opening and peaceful.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

Story written in 1934 by Josephine Johnson and winner of the Pulitzer (first novel). It tells the story of 4 daughters and their parents living on a farm heavily mortgaged during the Depression and the Dust Bowl. I think it can be impressed upon the reader how momentous it is that it won a Pulitzer. While she is not the first woman to win the Pulitzer it is still an accomplishment to win with a panel of all male reviewers. The prose is beautiful in its descriptions of nature as well as the exploration of the internal life and thoughts of the narrator as she ponders love unrequited, death, and other struggles.

The start off, sets the stage for the book, "It’s a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months’ time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."

There are many great lines. Here is another example; "Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind."

It was a bit hard to engage with the book but I think it is more about the beautiful almost poetic writing that makes you not want to go to fast. To savor the words. To picture them.

I have often wondered if I could write fiction, would I be happier if I wrote what was considered to be one great novel or if I wrote a number of novels that were either considered to be good or were simply successful? Josephine Winslow Johnson didn't write just one novel, but her first novel, published at the age of 24, won the Pulitzer Prize. While she wrote three other novels and two short story collections, it is difficult to find much information on these works. She is really only known today for Now In November.

It is easier to answer my either/or questions when given a specific situation. If the either/or question presented to me centered around Now In November, I would have chosen to be the author of Now In November. Now In November tells the story of a farming family over a period of 10 years during the depression in the US. While Now In November may lack the grand scope of The Grapes of Wrath, it tells a story that is dark, sad and honest and every bit as poignant as The Grapes of Wrath. I happened, out of pure circumstance, to be reading this novel at the same time I was reading a book of non-fiction that covered the time of the Great Depression, and this novel truly made the whole time period come alive for me. It somehow seems wrong or unfair that a 24-year old can provide insights into her characters that are so thoughtful and though-provoking while at the same time feeling true to the characters and their situation. The 10-year period covered as well as the story's progression through a single growing season were very important structural components to creating the story's full impact.

"It’s a queer experience for a man to go through, to work years for security and peace, and then in a few months’ time have it all dissolve into nothing; to feel the strange blankness and dark of being neither wanted nor necessary any more. Things had come slow to him and gone fast, and it made him suspicious even of the land."

I don't know if I will try anything else by Josephine Winslow Johnson, but I am very appreciative that I found Now In November.

The tale of a farming family in Depression era US as years of struggling to keep up with the mortgage culminate in many months' drought...
Narrated by daughter Marget, who looks on at her driven, embittered father, cowed and dutiful mother and her two sisters: practical Merle and strange (mad? angry?) Kerrin. When a quiet farm hand comes to work, he arouses strong feelings ...but all through is the endless struggle to get the work done, and the total uncertainty over the future as, despite their toil, the rains fail or the government impose extra taxes.
Original and memorable tale; 1935 Pulitzer winner.

a family struggles to make in on their farm during a long and severe drought.

"We have no reason to hope or believe but we do because we must" "Love and old faith are gone. But there is the need and the desire left, and out of these hills they may come again. I cannot believe this is the end. And if this is the only consolation of a heart in its necessity, it does not matter, since it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can ask at times.'

547. Now in November by Josephine Johnson (read 29 June 1958) (Pulitzer fiction prize for 1935) This won the Pulitzer prize for fiction for 1935 and that is why I read it. I thought it better than some other such winners I read.

Beautifully written and moving story, but I always felt a distinct distance from the characters.

This book was easily the best book I've read this year. It's hard to say, so soon after having read this book, how much it will still be with me in the long run but I do believe it will remain as one of my Top 5 books ever read.

If you like The Grapes of Wrath you will love this book. In fact, TGoW is my all time favorite book and yet I still think that Johnson did a better job of telling the story of the Great Depression.

Now in November won the Pulitzer in 1935, 5 years before The Grapes of Wrath won it. It tells the story of a family on a farm in Nowhereville, America who is having trouble making their mortgage. People starve to death. People are evicted from their land. People die choking on the clouds of dust. The local teacher lady goes crazy. It's all very depressing and very touching and extremely moving.

The writing style is very simple. I found myself reading this book much more slowly than I normally do, as I wanted to give the words time to drip down and seep in.

In summation : This book should be required reading in every American high school.

Dryness of drought, you can feel the dust in your mouth, insular portrayal of 1930s farming in mid US, no radio etc, no contact with the world, very intense

This story reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It is a very bleak story of burden, desperation and tragedy woven with a thread of hope of a farming family in the dustbowl days of the Great Depression. Marget tells the story of her two sisters, Kerrin and Merle, and her parents, and the farm-hand, Grant in a ten-year span starting in her early teen years. Battling debts, drought, unrequited love among other challenges over this time period, the characters never prevail but never completely lose their sense of hope.½

While less exciting than Dillard's Tinker Creek and not so perfectly edited as Erliche's The Solace of Wide and Open Places, this book has a charm of its own for mature readers and may be the closest a prose book has ever come to haiku.

DNF